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Obama’s Opulent Lifestyle

When Calvin Coolidge was President in the glitzy 1920s, he took the republican ideal so seriously that he ended up in a series of tiffs with the White House housekeeper, Elizabeth Jaffray, over the cost of state dinners, and took to admonishing the executive branch for using too many pencils. Such behavior now serves only as a punchline to a joke that is not funny. The current annual cost of the White House—just in household expenses, not the policy operations for which it exists—is $1.4 billion. Annually, presidential vacations cost $20 million; the first family’s yearly health care costs are $7 million; more than $6 million is spent on the White House grounds each year. Transporting the President cost $346 million last year.

Like many of his predecessors, President Coolidge recognized that Americans looked up to the President as the only nationally elected politician, and he sought to behave accordingly. His example has been forgotten. John F. Groom, who has written a book about the growth of the White House, contrasts the expectation that Presidents “should run their lives as examples to the nation, with frugality and simplicity,” with the conduct of President Obama, who, despite constant harping about “income inequality,” has displayed “the very height of unbridled personal excess in his own lifestyle.”

There was a reason that the Founding Fathers rejected titles and honorifics in favor of simplicity. Thankfully, the straightforward address, “Mr. President,” won out over the pretentious names that John Adams suggested, which included “His Majesty the President,” “His Mighty Benign Highness,” and “His High Mightiness.” Too many in our government have forgotten which way around this is supposed to work. Here in America, it’s supposed to be small government, Big People. This is the New World, not the Old.

—Charles C.W. Cooke, NationalReview.com

Pickpocketing Taxpayers

The White House said [in April] that under current law “some wealthy individuals” can amass “substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”

Think about that statement for a moment, for it reveals a corrupt mind-set. The Administration is saying that America has a government that believes it has the moral authority to decide just what a “reasonable” level of retirement savings is. That’s an alarming statement.

It’s unlikely Obama will be able to tap into Americans’ retirements this year or next. But the Democrats will keep trying. It’s just too tempting. Already Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Richard Cordray said the agency wants to “help” Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they’ve put away for their retirements, and is “exploring ... in terms of whether and what authority we have.”

—Investor’s Business Daily

The Long and Short of Filing Taxes

[In 1935] the Form 1040 instructions were just two pages long. Today taxpayers must wade through 214 pages of instructions, about five times the number in 1975, and quadruple the number in 1985, the year before taxes were “simplified.”

Today’s short form, at 46 lines, has nearly double the number of lines on the 1945 version of the standard 1040 tax return. The short form’s instructions total 96 pages, more than the long form’s entire booklet from 1995!

If you think your tax return is difficult, be thankful you’re not in charge of taxes at General Electric. In 2006 [GE] filed what is believed to be the nation’s longest tax return, more than 24,000 pages had it been printed on paper. It was filed as part of a new mandate that large corporations submit their tax returns electronically.

GE’s tax return may be even longer today. When NTU’s researchers contacted GE’s media relations staff in 2010, we were told that the firm’s tax department had stopped counting after the filing documents routinely beat the 24,000-page mark every year!

—David Keating, National Taxpayers Union

Shaking Big Oil Down

President Obama has been telling America for months that special tax breaks for the oil and gas industry must come to an end. The presidential demand always prompts puzzled gazes among tax and energy-industry experts, who ask: What special tax breaks?

USA Today just published the Top 10 list of companies that paid the highest U.S. income taxes as of 2012, and oil industry companies took three of the slots. Number one was Exxon Mobil at $31 billion, followed by Chevron at $20 billion, and sixth was ConocoPhillips at $8 billion. That is about $60 billion in taxes among them, more than the other seven companies on the list—including Apple and Microsoft—combined. Don’t look for a presidential attack on Apple or Microsoft anytime soon.

Tax Freedom Day 2013 is April 18, the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year. In 2013 Americans will pay $2.76 trillion in federal taxes and $1.45 trillion in state taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.22 trillion, or 29.4% of income.

Americans will spend more in taxes in 2013 than they will on food, clothing and housing combined.

Americans will spend 14 days working to pay sales and excise taxes, 12 days to pay property taxes and 7 days for other miscellaneous taxes (car taxes, severance taxes and estate taxes).

Individual income taxes represent the largest component of Americans’ tax bills. All but seven states levy a state income tax on top of the federal income tax. Paying these taxes together takes Americans about 40 days of work.

Americans will work 9 days to pay their share of corporate income taxes.

Americans will work 25 days to pay their payroll (or social insurance) taxes—those taxes dedicated to funding Social Security and Medicare.

—William McBride, Kyle Pomerleau and Elizabeth Malm, Tax Foundation

Easter Smackdown

Two moms had a fistfight at an Easter egg hunt in Seattle when one mom pushed the other’s kid out of the way so her own kid could reach the eggs first. One mom got a black eye.